A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be a part of the EMC Rocks Oracle Open World event out in San Francisco. We took over the elan Events Center on Howard Street to create a venue that acted as a genius bar and haven for those attending Oracle Open World. I say haven because, if you’ve been to a large conference, you know the biggest complaints you hear are always “I couldn’t get a seat at the keynote”, “I missed the lunch hour”, “it’s too crowded”, or “the booths were so busy I did not get enough 1×1 time with the experts”.
We wanted to take a different approach. Our idea was to provide the following:
- A space that people would have plenty of room to watch the keynote streaming live while they were enjoying a great breakfast
- EMC and Oracle Solutions Experts available all day long for that intimate conversation
- Small sessions on topics Oracle DBAs would need to be more successful in their roles while serving healthy and hearty meals in a laid back space
- An amazing customer appreciate party at the end of it all
So how did we do? Let’s see the reviews on Twitter:
- “#EMCRocks at the Elan, very near #oow15. Violin quartet, open bar, tacos & #bigdata & more. Visit to check it out!” @PhileoPaul
- “@nathanbiggs sharing the facts about Oracle licensing at #oow15. Glad to be part of #EMCRocks” @HouseofBrick
- “#emcRocks more at #oow15” @furrier
Really this event was about getting to know our customers better who manage Oracle apps with EMC solutions and bridge the gap to show them what else EMC had to offer. These were some of our best attended sessions:
Consolidate Your Oracle Environments with XtremIO
This session explored ways to deal with today’s sharp database growth without overpaying for storage. When your storage array gives you fast, predictable performance, you can consolidate all your databases, production and non–production alike, and save yourself big bucks. On site, customers really connected with the message and stayed after the session for a deeper dive on XtremIO capabilities for Oracle database users.
Deliver Scale, High Availability, and Extreme Performance for Massive Oracle Environments
This session showed attendees how ScaleIO adopts the SDS approach across massive Oracle environments and provides five major benefits: massive scale, extreme performance, unparalleled flexibility, always-on availability, and compelling economics.
The Platform to Power Your Mission Critical Oracle Environments (VMAX)
DBAs learned how the VMAX Data Services Platform can transform their Oracle environment. VMAX allows customers to consolidate large-scale Oracle environments across production, test and dev, and business users. Leveraging space-efficient copies compounds these benefits. Check Out VMAX3 Service Level Provisioning and Oracle Integrations. You might also be interested in Best Practices for Service Levels, SnapVX, and ProtectPoint / ASM.
Powering Oracle E-Business Suite with EMC (VNX)
Attendees explored VNX’s role as the most flexible Oracle platform in EMC’s portfolio, enabling customers to connect Oracle Databases using different protocols and to configure for different price points. All VNX capabilities can be seen first-hand at our Oracle Solutions Centers.
Protecting Your Enterprise with EMC Backup and Recovery for Your Oracle Computing Environment
DBAs discussed the changes occurring in the data protection landscape in this session. They learned by integrating more closely with the data sources and leveraging the power of software solutions such as EMC’s Data Protection Suite and enabling software technologies such as DDBoost, EMC Data Protection Solutions are able to break the mold of traditional backup and unleash greater performance and flexibility.
Of course we can’t forget about the Customer Appreciation party. House music was pumping on the first and second floors, while gourmet appetizers and tasty beverages were served throughout the entire space. The highlight of the party for the guests and this writer was the entertainment. The Zen String Girls entertained the third floor crowd with their electric violins playing melodic pop songs. You couldn’t miss the girls as they had on LED dresses that lit up as they played. The girls would come out and play amongst the crowd posing for pictures with the guests. Here is a sample of what we got to experience live:
Don’t fret if you missed this EMC Rocks event. We will be rocking other conferences in 2016. Be sure to follow our Twitter handles @EMCStorage and @EMCProtectData as well as subscribing to this blog to make sure you are aware of all upcoming events!